The Hindu : Front Page : `People did not reject BJP'

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Thursday, Oct 21, 2004

Front Page

Front Page

`People did not reject BJP'

By Neena Vyas

The Bharatiya Janata Party president, L.K. Advani, addressing newspersons at the party headquarters in New Delhi on Wednesday. -- Photo: V. Sudershan

NEW DELHI, OCT. 20. The Bharatiya Janata Party is not facing a crisis, it continues to enjoy the trust of the people and is confident of staging a comeback sooner rather than later as the United Progressive Alliance Government does not seem to be keen on seeing it in the Opposition for too long, the new party chief, L.K. Advani, said here today.

He said his first journey outside Delhi as the new party president would be to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters in Nagpur where he would meet the leaders and be present at the annual RSS Dussehra function. He would then meet all the leaders of the National Democratic Alliance parties, going first to Hyderabad to meet the Telugu Desam Party leader, Chandrababu Naidu. Party leaders later said Mr. Advani would meet other NDA leaders also to assure them of the BJP's desire to maintain and consolidate the NDA. However, no answers were available from party leaders on how the BJP proposed to assuage the feelings of the RSS and keep Hindutva at bay as demanded by its allies.

He said that his "main concern" as the new president would be to meet the challenge of the "ideological assault" mounted on it by the UPA Government. "We have to meet this challenge head on ... respond ... and emerge victorious," he said. His charge was that under the Government "governance has taken a back seat" as it was busy targeting the Opposition's ideology.

It was Mr. Advani's first press conference here after taking charge for a fifth tenure as party president, a position he has held for over 10 years in the 24-year-old party, and there was nothing, he said, which suggested that the party had come to terms with its electoral defeat and rejection by the people. In fact, several times Mr. Advani talked about "people's trust in us" and maintained that both in the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly polls "people did not reject us ... it was a close contest."

He stated that the change in the top party job was neither necessitated by its recent electoral defeats nor by squabbling among the next generation leaders. He insisted that the outgoing president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, had said not to relieve him would be "cruel" as there were pressing personal reasons for his resignation. As if to reiterate these points, senior leaders Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan flanked him, while M.A. Naqvi also sat on the podium from where he addressed the press.

Since the party's last chintan baithak after the defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has renamed Hindutva as "nationalism" and today Mr. Advani described "nationalism" as the "BJP's ideological DNA." He said that although there were two main "national parties" in the country — the Congress and the BJP — "the BJP is the only party that is both national and nationalist."

The Congress was not "nationalist," not only because it was headed by a person of "videshi mool" (foreign origin), but because it had "insulted" Savarkar, allowed the "demographic invasion" of India by Bangladeshis which could "lead to the creation of a third Islamic state in the subcontinent," and it had "imprisoned" their leader, Uma Bharti, for trying to raise the national flag. Mr. Advani also indulged in the BJP's all-time favourite activity — lashing out against the Congress and the Communists for using "pseudo secularism as a façade for vote bank politics."

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